


Tradition

by PetrichorPerfume



Series: Shenanigans [74]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Brother Gabriel, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Little Brother Castiel, M/M, Nesting, Rituals, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabe and Cas have a tradition that starts with a chase and ends with cuddles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tradition

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Lucifer Fallen Angel, who asked for 'fluffy Gabe-Cas time' and cuddle rituals.

It starts with a chase every time.

 

Gabriel lets Cas win for about a mile – whooping and dancing and spiraling through the air as slowly as he can to give Cas the illusion of putting up a good fight – then he closes the distance between them, swoops down, and plucks his little brother out of the sky.

 

“You caught me,” Cas says every time, as if Gabriel’s victory comes to a surprise to him after all these years. (Gabriel suspects that his victory _had_ come as a surprise to Castiel the first few times, if only because Gabriel had let him win in so many races as a child that Cas had come to the conclusion that he was faster than the archangel.)

 

“I did,” Gabriel always responds. “And now I’m going to drag you back to my top-secret underground bunker and cuddle you ‘til you can’t stand it anymore.”

 

Sometimes, Cas tries and fails to hide a smile as he says, “Oh no.” Other times, he manages to be completely serious for the time it takes him to utter the two syllables before bursting into hysterical laughter. Either way, it never fails to make Gabriel chuckle.

 

After that, Gabriel will tell Cas _exactly_ what he’s going to do. “Gonna make you feel so warm and safe and loved,” he’ll say sometimes. Other times, he’ll promise his brother that he’s going to “wrap my wings around you and keep you there until you understand how much I love you,” at which point Cas will start to squirm and demand that Gabriel take him back to their nest and cuddle him right that instant.

 

***

 

The nest isn’t very impressive by any standards. It isn’t made of solidified beams of light or liquid diamonds and it doesn’t shine with the light of fifty-thousand tiny gems. It doesn’t have feathers from rare prehistoric birds or down from extinct birds.

 

It’s made of clothing and goose down feathers. Most of the clothes are replicas of Gabriel and Castiel’s favorite items, but they have some shirts and jackets from each of their other family members as well because it just wouldn’t feel like home otherwise.

 

It took them a month to build because Gabriel thought that it “had to be perfect” and after a while, Cas found himself agreeing. They’d built it in the rafters near the bunker’s highest point because no one else went up there and they felt the need to have a space just to themselves.

 

And when it was finally done, it might not have been very impressive, but it was _theirs_.

 

***

 

Sometimes, Cas will be a sweet, docile little angel and let himself be carried on Gabriel’s wings. Other times, he’ll pretend to struggle so much that Gabriel will begin to fear that Cas doesn’t really want to spend time with him after all.

 

This time, his baby brother is putting up a little bit of a fuss. “But I can fly too,” Cas keeps insisting. “You’re going too slow,” he adds petulantly.

 

“We’d be there already if you’d stop wriggling around,” Gabriel counters. It’s hard enough to fly with a full-grown angel on his back, let alone a full-grown squirmy angel.

 

Cas finally settles down and Gabriel surges forward and closes the distance between them and the nest. He lands gracefully and lets Cas climb out of his wings and stretch himself out. The younger angel holds out his arms but Gabriel just shakes his head and hands him a piece of blue chalk, because as much as he’d love to wrap himself around Cas right now, they’ve being doing things the same way each time and he’s not about to break tradition.

 

Cas rolls his eyes and flutters away, landing on the other side of the room. Gabriel follows and watches as Cas draws yet another heart on the wall. He picks up a piece of green chalk that he’d left behind last time and draws a matching heart next to Castiel’s. “We’re going to run out of room soon,” he says. It’s not quite true – not yet, anyway – because they still have a whole wall and a half to get through before they have to start worrying about running out of space, but they both plan on coming up here to cuddle for years to come and eventually, they will run out of wall.

 

“We can draw on each other,” Castiel suggests.

 

Gabriel can’t help but smile at the idea. “Nah,” he says after a while. “I’ll just get you a T-shirt. Or a hoodie. You like hoodies, right? ‘Cutest baby bro ever,’ or something like that.”

 

Castiel chuckles. “I’d get you a T-shirt, too, but I’m not sure what I could say without offending Mika or Luce.”

 

“It’s ‘cause I’m your favorite, right?” Gabriel asks, only half-jokingly. Cas has grown to love both Michael and Lucifer, but it’s well known that Gabriel is still his favorite brother even if the youngest angel has never admitted to it directly.

 

“Sometimes,” Castiel concedes.

 

“What do you mean, _sometimes_?”

 

“I was rather partial to Michael that time you and Lucifer turned Dean bright orange.”

 

Gabriel smirks. “It’s totally his color.”

 

Cas shakes his head fondly. “Come on; let’s go cuddle.”

 

***

 

There isn’t any light where Gabriel and Cas chose to build their nest, but there are candles in the rafters, hundreds of them that cast shadow upon shadow on their wings and their limbs and their intertwined hands.

 

There isn’t much to do in the nest either, but that’s all right because they’re content to talk and to hold one another and to doze off every once in a while during a lull in the conversation.

 

Eventually, they’ll get lonely, because as nice as it is to have a morning or an afternoon just to focus on each other, they both begin to miss Michael and Lucifer and Dean and Sam and Adam after only a few hours of being apart from them. Sam and Dean always joke about how their angels return to them “extra warm and extra cuddly” and Michael always has a big lunch prepared for them whenever they decide to descend from the rafters and rejoin the rest of their family.

 

And that’s how it ends, with Gabriel sandwiched between Sam and Lucifer and with Cas perched on Dean’s lap, eating tea sandwiches from his hand.


End file.
